The ruling Grand National Party, led by newly elected chairman Rep. Hong Joon-pyo, has announced a reformative, “people-friendly” stance. In the party workshop at the National Assembly on Sunday, the Supreme Council and the policy committee agreed almost unanimously to slash university tuition fees and reinforce regulations over conglomerates. The plan also included overturning additional corpo...

President Lee Myung-bak, who returned from his African tour Monday, is expected to replace the justice minister, prosecutor-general and senior presidential secretary for civil affairs later this month. In protest over a bill which state prosecutors believe restricts their investigative rights, Prosecutor General Kim Joon-kyu offered to resign last week while Lee was in South Africa. Lee is like...

Red Cross officials from the two Koreas held informal talks on the sidelines of an international conference in China last week, a South Korean Red Cross official said Monday. Kim Yong-hyun, secretary-general of the South’s Red Cross, and Paek Yong-ho, vice chairman of the Central Committee of the Red Cross Society of North Korea, met during breaks at the East Asian regional Red Cross leadership ...

South Korean and U.S. Air Forces have recently reached an agreement to stage an aerial refueling exercise on a regular basis here, using a U.S. in-flight tanker, a military source said Monday. The first joint refueling exercise in which the U.S. is to mobilize its KC-135 tanker currently based in Okinawa, Japan, is expected to take place in the latter half of this year, the source said. “Althou...

For ten days since the multiple-trade-union law took effect on July 1, 167 new unions have been formed, with about 90 percent of them not joining either of the umbrella unions, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions. Under the revised labor law, employees can freely set up labor unions no matter how many there are at a work site. The measure is expecte...

South Korea will carry out a disaster drill on a nuclear power plant on the east coast this week to check updated emergency protocols on damage control and evacuation, the government said Monday. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology said the drill will be carried out at the Wolsong station, located 370 kilometers southeast of Seoul, on Tuesday and Wednesday. The plant currently has ...

An American politician who allegedly posted himself an imitation grenade has been accused of making false police report. Leroy Schaffer, a city councilman from Minnesota, told authorities that somebody had sent him a bomb. It turned out to be a ploy to buy sympathy from people. On July 1st, the accused had called police concerning a suspicious package he had received from Chicago. He told offic...

A Korean Marine has hanged himself in his barracks, an official said Monday, in a new blow to the Corps after a corporal who claimed he was bullied went on a deadly shooting spree last week. The 19-year-old Private First Class, identified only as Jung, was found by colleagues Sunday night hanging in a barracks shower room in the southeastern port of Pohang, a Marine Corps spokesman said. Milita...

TBILISI (AP) -- The personal photographer to the Georgian president was shown on television Saturday confessing to supplying a colleague with secret information that was then sent to a Russian secret service. Irakli Gedenidze confessed to giving another photographer, Zurab Kurtsikidze of the European Pressphoto Agency, details of the president's itinerary, motorcade route and offices for unspeci...

At least eight people were killed and four were missing after torrential rains hit southern parts of South Korea over the weekend, emergency officials said Sunday. Since Friday, as much as 40 centimeters of rain has fallen in South Gyeongsang and Jeolla provinces, leaving tens of thousands of hectares of farmland submerged and nearly 90 homes flooded. On Sunday, two old women, aged 92 and 86, w...

Defense minister orders full-scale inspection of all military units Although his son will not join the military for another 10 years, Moon Young-sook is already apprehensive that his boy could suffer the “appalling” human rights abuses said to be widespread there. “I feel more worried than before as it is said that such abuses are still taking place in many units, not in just a few. When we hea...

Prosecutors are investigating 11 people on charges of establishing an anti-state organization under a directive from North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, officials said Sunday. Among them was a member of the Korea Higher Education Research Institute, which spearheaded a nationwide campaign to halve college tuitions, triggering criticism that the probe aims to stifle voices against a government p...